Aftermath
by kamarooka
Summary: Post 'The Winter Soldier'. Clint finds a shaken and angry Natasha after the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D., forcing him to deal with the fallout of her emotions and we find out where he was when everything was unfolding. One-shot for now, but may become part of something larger. Clintasha. Could probably be T, but M for language, just in case.


**I know this is not what I promised my regular readers - but I do love a bit of BlackHawk and couldn't resist posting this while I'm working on the other stuff. I didn't have a beta for this and wrote it whilst sitting in an airport, so any mistakes are solely my own. So far, this is just a one-shot, but I have a couple of other ideas floating around (maybe one for a prequel), but I think they will all be able to be read as stand-alone pieces.**

**Of course, I own nothing in the Marvel universe, I'm just playing around. Enjoy and drop a review please :)**

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Clint snuck into the farmhouse just after 3am, every sense on high alert. He crept across the floor on silent feet heading towards the stairs with the intention of retrieving the go-bag he had stashed in the upstairs bedroom. He had been moving constantly for the last 32 hours, since the minute he caught wind of the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D.; a piece of information delivered so thoughtfully by another 'agent' with a gun trained on his back. After he had dealt with that minor issue accordingly (that guy was an idiot really for thinking he could take on Hawkeye and win), he had gone underground and hightailed it the hell out of Bosnia. Apparently, there was no one left to report to, so he wasn't too worried about abandoning his assignment. Getting back into the U.S. required a quick stop at a not so reputable forger for a new passport and a long ride on a shitty plane. A few stolen cars later and he was pulling up five miles from the old farm and going the rest of the way on foot. After sitting in a spruce tree for a couple of hours to case out the place, he ventured inside; he wanted to grab his bag and anything else he needed and get out of there as quickly as possible and go find Natasha. His bow in hand, he navigated the dark corridors, carefully avoiding all of the creaky floorboards. He had just walked into the lounge when a soft thump above his head reached his ears and raised the hairs on the back of his neck. He flexed his fingers and aligned a shaft and arrowhead in his quiver then began to quickly and quietly climb the stairs. The upstairs level was brighter than the one below without the wraparound porch to block out the light of the moon. He inched across the landing and paused outside the slightly ajar bedroom door to load an arrow, breathing deeply. He tensed and drew the string back, readying himself to push through the door.

"What took you so long?"

As soon as he heard the voice drift out of the room, Clint straightened and used his foot to swing the door open, but kept his bow taught as his eyes zeroed in on the figure across the room. Whilst he didn't need sunlight to recognise that silhouette anywhere, the last day and a half had him on edge. As he paused in the frame, the bedside lamp flickered on; Natasha was standing in front of the bed, watching him warily. Clint didn't miss the gun held in her hand by her side, nor her pale face and tense shoulders. They stared each other down for a few seconds before Clint spoke up.  
"Sorry, traffic was crap." He finally relaxed his bow and returned the arrow to his quiver. He wasn't expecting the dusty book from the bedside table that came flying at his head.  
"Jesus, Nat!" He exclaimed as he straightened out of his duck.  
"Where the hell have you been?" She hissed at him, eyes narrow. "The entire fucking world goes insane and you're nowhere to be seen!" Clint swore even her hair was about to start crackling in anger.  
"I don't think it was the entire world; Bosnia seems pretty calm except for the usual drug lords and stuff." He realised that humour probably wasn't the best approach as he somersaulted out of the way of a knife that sailed towards his head. "Fuck! Natasha... if you throw one more thing at my head…"  
Again he straightened up, keeping nervous eyes trained on his partner.  
"I'm just giving you a taste of what you missed over the last few days." She sniped. "Feel lucky that I'm not shooting at you like they were at me."  
"Oh, so the Black Widow can't handle being shot at a little anymore, can she?"

If Clint hadn't been so on edge and still reeling from the… loss of his job, he would have known immediately that that was not the smartest comeback; as it was the first indication he had was a well-aimed uppercut swinging towards his jaw. He felt his head snap back and retreated a couple of steps to give himself more space to prepare for the next attack. Natasha came at him , fists and feet flying. He blocked the majority of her blows as he evaluated her; he noticed she was favouring a shoulder and that she lacked the usual precision to be found in her fighting. He took some solace in the fact that she wasn't actively trying to kill him; her anger simply needed a target and he was in the room. He continued to let her fly at him for a while, defending rather than attacking, but after a particularly harsh jab to his kidney, Clint tired of being a human punching bag.  
"Tash, Natasha, stop it." He grunted out. The next time a fist flew at him, he grabbed it and used it to spin her around so she was facing away from him. It was a testament to how exhausted and upset she must have been that he was able to clamp the Black Widow around the middle, locking her arms against her sides. It didn't stop her from trying to kick him in the shins though, which he managed to dodge without compromising his grip. He began to drag her away from the middle of the room towards a wall.  
"Get off me." She growled, squirming in his grip. "Get the fuck off me, you selfish bastard!" Clint knew she hated being pinned, that it reminded her too much of the Red Room, but if she was already injured he didn't want her making it worse with mindless fighting.  
"Natasha, I need you to relax." He began to whisper fervently into her ear. "You're okay, I'm here. I'm sorry I left you, I won't do it again, I promise. It's gonna be okay." He pressed his back against the wall and slid down it slowly, moving her legs out from underneath her and sitting her so she was side-on in his lap, his arms still clamped around her. "It's okay, it's okay, you did so well, Tasha."

He kept whispering to her , feeling her muscles begin to relax slowly, one by one, as he began to repeat his words. When he knew she wouldn't start attacking him again, he loosened his arm and started rubbing one hand up and down her arm and stroking her hair away from her face with the other, waiting her out. His quiver was sandwiched somewhat uncomfortably between his back and the wall, but it didn't matter, he just continued to sit with her. Clint rested his cheek on the top of her head and watched the room grow lighter with the false dawn.

"I thought he was dead." She finally said. That was the thing with Natasha, he knew that she would eventually start talking to him, he just had to be patient.  
"Hmm?" He pressed.  
"I thought Fury was dead and I had no idea where you were or if you were even alive. I thought we would all be going down with the ship, and there was nothing I could do about it. And I had to be calm, the whole time." She paused and Clint thought over her words. The whole time he had been trying to get back to the States, he had been worried about keeping any tails off of his ass and if Natasha was okay – not so much about what the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. meant and what no word from him would mean to her.

"I've been compromised, Clint."  
He stilled completely. "What do you mean? By whom?"  
"By you, you stupid bird." She replied quietly. "You ruined me the moment you picked me up in Mombasa and part of me hates you for it… and the other part knows that you were the best thing that ever could have happened to me… And now I can't even imagine what I would do without you."  
"Oh, Tasha." He sighed. "You would have been okay. And even if something had happened to me this week and I couldn't get back to you, you would be fine. You have other friends now; Steve and Tony and Bruce…"  
"It's not the same and you know it."  
Clint dropped his face down into the crook of her neck. "Yeah… I do." He murmured. They let a couple more minutes pass by in silence before a thought came to him. "How long have you been here anyway?"  
"About seven hours." Natasha replied. "I came to check if your stuff was still here, not sure whether I wanted it to be or not. If it was gone, I knew you were alive, but I had no idea where you were or in what situation. But it was here, so I knew you hadn't been here yet, but I didn't know why." Clint tightened his arms around her. "I was going to hang around until tomorrow night, then go and check out your other nests."  
"Well, you're on fire with the bird jokes tonight, aren't you?" Clint asked, trying to lessen the melancholy mood. Truthfully, he didn't mind it that much; Natasha was probably the only person in the world who could get away with saying stuff like that without some sort of reaction and what she had just said to him made him even more unwilling to overlook it. "You were going to wait over 24 hours; are you sure you would have been safe?"  
She shifted in his lap, making him wonder what she had done this time. "Well, aside than the fact that the only people who know you have this place are dead, Fury, or in this room, I may have taken a, uh, golden opportunity to erase our files. All of them. Across every database in the world." There was no hint of remorse in her voice, which didn't really surprise Clint. He simply stared at the back of her head, not sure whether to laugh or not.  
"Of course you did." He chuckled. "And when exactly did you find the time to do that?"  
"When I was lecturing Pierce on the questionable ethics behind trying to bring down the world's biggest protection agency." She answered, resting her head back against his collarbone.  
"Pierce?" He asked, shocked. Natasha laughed mirthlessly.  
"Mm hmm, I have a lot to fill you in on."  
"So it would seem." Clint said quietly – he really had missed out on a lot. "I want to know everything – after we sleep though, as it looks like we now have a secure place to level out."  
"Deal." She said as they stood up, straightening themselves. Clint absentmindedly rubbed at his side. "But there is one thing that I should probably tell you now…"  
Clint looked at her warily. "Natasha, it you are about to tell me that Loki is back with some intergalactic jellyfish or something, I may just have to kill you…"  
She looked at him with her signature 'Black-Widow-is-not-amused-one-eyebrow-raised' look. "I kissed Steve." She droned. He froze, waiting for her to tell him it was a joke, just as she was waiting for him to react. When he got nothing from her, his fingers twitched reflexively, wanting to reach for an arrow.  
"I take it back; I'm gonna kill him."  
Natasha placed a hand on his solar plexus. "Settle down, Hawkeye. If you must know, I initiated it and he was pretty freaked out by the idea at first."  
"At first?" Clint asked in a strangled voice.  
Natasha smirked. "Well, it probably _was_ his first kiss since the '40s."  
Clint muttered under his breath that the Captain was going to have his first broken nose since the '40s soon too. Natasha reached her hand up to place it on his cheek.  
"Relax, Birdbrain; it may have been an interesting experience in a high-pressure situation, but you're more than enough to handle on your own, trust me."  
Clint's expression softened as he looked down at her before bending to press a soft kiss against her lips. "I missed you." He whispered to her.  
"I missed you too, believe it or not." She answered. She stood on her toes to encourage him to kiss her again, letting him draw her in closer and winding her arms around his neck. Clint smirked cockily before deepening the kiss, holding a palm against her cheek.  
"Are you sure we're okay to stay here for a while?" He asked her when they drew back.  
"Yeah, why?" She answered.  
"Because I am about to show you just how much of me there is to handle." He teased as he tugged her, both laughing, towards the bed where they both thanked the universe that they were back in each other's arms.


End file.
